


petrol & brine

by Punxutawney



Category: Dunkirk (2017), Dunkirk (2017) RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Crushes, Dunkerque, Gen, M/M, Movie Sets, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 17:44:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11560209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punxutawney/pseuds/Punxutawney
Summary: At work, he mostly feels like an insignificant speck on a massive canvas. Thousands and thousands of extras. Real planes in the air, noisy authentic things made of thrillingly thin metal – they get to admire them, run fingers over the bumpy surface of a Supermarine – real ships, and real sand as long as the eye can see.





	petrol & brine

**1\. christopher nolan. two months**

So Fionn’s got this job, right.

If he’s honest, he really has no idea what working on a Christopher Nolan movie entails. Any movie, really. He can’t help but feel like he’s skipped a step; he should be a day player on _Holby City_ at this point, or in a _Doctor Who_ episode at best. When his agent set him up for the audition, he had no idea what was going to happen. The fact that he has an agent is still crazy to begin with.

So, it’s all very odd, not being told what he’s auditioning for, taken to a room with much more people than usual, until Nolan’s presence gives away the game.

Fionn doesn’t get starstruck often, so he doesn’t now, either. The man is as he would have imagined, anyway, politely keeping his distance. He doesn’t offer reassurances to the actors, which actually relaxes Fionn somewhat. There is no fuss, and he actually enjoys auditioning, simply tries not to mess up. He’ll get a cool story out of this.

But then, it turns out the story will contain a little more than one audition, and in what seems like a snap of a finger his life turns upside down and he’s shaking hands with Nolan – Chris – and Emma Thomas again and is given a tiny part of a top secret script, the leaking of which would probably put him behind bars for the rest of his days.

Fionn knows how movies are made. Of course. But, he has come to realise, he has no idea what it’s like in the trenches, so to speak. There are no trenches here, on the beach, and anyway, isn’t that kind of presumptuous? It’s not as if what he’s going through in any way approaches the real thing.

(Fionn can’t help but worry, at first, that this is exactly the sort of comment that might slip out of his mouth, totally inappropriate. But he’s heard Chris say it, himself, so it’s alright, probably. Things Fionn also worries about: slipping up on _Star Wars_ trivia, uncontrollable fits of laughter, and other acts Christopher Nolan would not tolerate on his movie set.)

Frankly, he doesn’t often feel like he is making a movie, himself. At work, he mostly feels like an insignificant speck on a massive canvas. Thousands and thousands of extras. Real planes in the air, noisy authentic things made of thrillingly thin metal – they get to admire them, run fingers over the bumpy surface of a Supermarine – real ships, and real sand as long as the eye can see. Real sea, cold and misty. The wind is constant, and the air smells of brine and petrol.

It’s like it’s arranged for them, not the cameras, like some ambitious historical re-enactment, a ridiculously large-scale role-play. So Fionn doesn't really feel like he’s acting, but simply reacting, most of the time.

It doesn’t mean it isn’t hard work. Because yeah, he has no preconception of a Chris Nolan experience, no matter how awesome he thinks _The Dark Knight_ is, so he’s not expecting the going to school part of it. The studying. He’s not dumb (by his own estimation, for what it’s worth), he reads, yeah, and he was prepared to research, but it is more intense than he expected.

Chris is himself a bit intimidating, always collected and prepared and solemn enough to come off as judgemental. Fionn feels a little ashamed for thinking this, because Chris is also always there for him, supportive and hands-on, often just a few steps away, like the world’s coolest mother hen. Together, these qualities make Fionn want to learn everything he possibly can, so no one can fault him for not trying – it’s made easy for him, because there’s even a reading list of sorts, and movies Chris wants them to watch, some he even wants to screen for them himself.

So, Fionn watches the faces of French boys from the 60s, Hitchcock films, men silently going about their work. He watches, somewhat inexplicably, Keanu Reeves on a bus and Sigourney Weaver crawling through the air vent (he could swear he sees Chris Nolan, for a moment, _geeking out_ , when he talks about the movie, his accent gaining an upward American slant he never usually slips into – only when he talks to his kids, or Emma, sometimes, when they’re having one of their semi-private chats Fionn tries not to overhear).

Yeah, he sometimes thinks when they’re watching a chase scene, he gets it now, with some weird burst of clarity going up in his chest towards his heart, feeling dizzy with something he can only think of as _cinematic experience_ ; other times, he just gets lost in the movie, or feels bored, suddenly snapping into awareness when Chris points out something, or Harry nudges him or wiggles or squirms next to him (he moves a lot, more than Fionn, touching his shoulder and knee and kind of overflowing the border of his body, easy).

So yeah, it’s a bit like school, but a weird version where you only take history and PE where you try to learn to move like someone always hungry and hollow, not to be yourself. Scrubbed clean of the 21st century.

 

**2\. harry styles. six weeks**

So, he’s got castmates now.

Fionn’s never listened to One Direction even though it’s pretty hard to avoid exposure to them, sure, with all his little sister’s friends giggling and playing songs on their phones constantly. But he has no preconception of Harry, either, beyond the fact that he’s Famous, in this sort of ephemeral inescapable way that Harry himself seems to be able to shrug off in private, so that it quickly wears off of him, and soon they’re just mates.

That’s another thing, about movies, how much time you spend with people beforehand, not just Chris and Emma. (It’s a luxury, he learns later, courtesy of the sheer power an A-list director commands. “I used to prep with Pacino in the trailer in the mornings,” Chris says with the slightest of chuckles, the humblebrag of the year, and Fionn’s weirdly delighted despite himself.) Besides the movie nights and the rehearsals with Chris, they’re put through a boot camp where Fionn gets the wind knocked out of him every day. He’s never really worked out, and once again he has to wonder why someone with even a smidgen more of physical prowess wasn’t picked for the job. Harry is in good shape already, but he actually needs to lose some muscle mass, to be rebuilt as a starved desperate man.

Harry auditioned too, but he was invited, specifically, because Chris wanted to see him. He doesn’t even pretend to be casual about it, which Fionn finds endearing. (Most things about him are.) Harry loves the Batman movies, and _Inception_ , and and and… – In private, with Fionn, he indulges in some fanboying, and is mildly shocked when Fionn says sheepishly he’s never seen _Memento_. He didn’t really have time before being whisked off to France, okay? They end up watching it on a laptop that night, slouched together on a bed so small that they keep bumping knees and elbows together until Fionn sort of wraps himself around Harry. It’s all awfully comfortable.

They talk about their grandfathers, and Fionn tells Harry some of the stories he’s learned, how proud his granddad seemed of him. How they look similar in uniforms. How his grandma reacted. (It’s not that his family hasn’t talked about the war, but it still feels like he’s learned something, like something’s opened up now.) Harry’s granddad was in the RAF; his secondhand stories are somewhat better.

Harry rejoins Fionn later into the shoot, when he’s already been on the beach for a few weeks, participated in the huge scenes that were orchestrated to perfection, loudspeaker-wielding ADs moving troops like commanding officers. It was almost like an army had truly invaded this place, in reverse, crawled out of the Channel onto the beach and taken over with their superior technology.

Dunkerque itself is small, quiet, almost sleepy, but they can sneak away sometimes, if they feel like it. On his days off, which are few and far between, Fionn doesn’t often feel like adventuring, but the boys do make trips to Lille, Bruges, even Calais.

Perhaps it really is like being in the service, this ebb and flow of physical exertion and downtime. He wouldn’t know. All he knows is that he wants to spend as much time as possible with Harry, for some reason, even though they’ve been shooting around the clock for the last eight days together and should be sick of each other by now. He likes the other blokes, too, but it’s Harry he gravitates towards, like a Spitfire circling around a ship, sun in his eyes.

 

**3\. dunkerque. four hours**

So, maybe, he’s got a crush.

It might be just the forced closeness, the fact that Fionn has spent the last few days manhandled and shouted at by Harry, or crouched together in the twilight, trying to let the filmmakers catch the exact moment they want. There’s a certain added intensity to the late-evening shoots. They are all tired after a day of filming in the water, but this scene needs to be filmed in increments night after night: the dusk is short-lived, and the IMAX film runs out quick, as he’s learned by now.

Chris and Hoyte crouch by them, attentive and efficient. The DP is a giant in the shadows, the camera a mechanical second head protruding from his shoulder; he is a big man by day, too, but now when Fionn is huddled up on the damp sand with his arms around himself and trying to keep his teeth from actually shattering, Hoyte looms larger than ever, even on his knees.

By now Fionn’s also learned to almost forget himself when Chris and Hoyte talk about the actors, not giving directions, but to each other. It’s another thing that makes Fionn feel like he’s not really here for acting; his job isn’t that of an actor but the carrier of his body, which he has given over to the filmmakers to mold as they wish. They discuss the cast’s bodies like materials, their faces and skin tones, especially when lighting is of the essence. It’s a peculiar dance: the grips move swiftly, occasionally retreating to Hoyte to receive orders, then back to their equipment; Chris and Hoyte bounce off of each other, eyes measuring and hands drawing shapes in the air; this busy little group of people keeps stepping back and forth, over and over, signaling with gestures and shorthand, until action commences.

Now it’s just Chris and Hoyte and them, three shivering boys and a small fire in the near dark, a challenge for the celluloid. They wait silently, Aneurin and Harry dark shapes to his sides. Harry fiddles with his hands, his buttons, his tags (Fionn’s still not used to wearing them, for some reason, though the coarse uniform feels natural, helpful). Aneurin keeps yawning, scratching his curls. They don’t talk, both out of respect and exhaustion.

Chris moves closer and sits in front of Harry, asking him to move his head this way and that. He wants to see the light off of his eyes a certain way, finally simply touching Harry’s jaw, turning his head and telling him something quietly, Fionn can’t hear what. All these things are weirdly not that intimate, it’s just like your rugby coach or doctor touching you, and you let them, but now Fionn’s thinking of Harry’s eyes too; they’re expressive, like every part of him, quick to dart around and crinkle at the corners when he laughs.

The work is serious, but Harry often isn’t. He laughs easy and loud and makes Fionn laugh too, even if it’s dumb and he’s kind of not in the mood. Harry seems to bear this all a little easier; not that Fionn is complaining, but he sometimes feels swamped, like he thinks he should do, anyway.

It’s not the physical strain. Hanging off of docks and climbing and running in the water is just stuff you do. It’s the enormity of the beach and the sky: the space around him is so dizzying sometimes, he has to turn his back to the sea. Is this a hint of what it felt like to stand here, for real? Is he being presumptuous again? His feelings are not borne of desperation and dread for his life, but of some shapeless pressure that’s started to build up in his chest.

“It’s being observed,” Harry says to him, calm, when they’re lying together in the sand after the day and Fionn has tried to explain it all to him.

Fionn is tired, but unlike Aneurin, who looked ready to faceplant into his bed, he’s all wound up, they both are, so they’re trying to calm down together as usual. They’ve picked one of the dunes far away from the actual shooting perimeter and designated it as their own after-shoot debriefing spot. It’s June, so it’s not actually cold, after a cup of tea and a change into decent modern-day clothes. It’s just dark. Fionn can see moonlight glint in Harry’s eyes the way Chris probably wants to.

“You’re being constantly watched,” Harry continues. “It puts pressure on you.” He sort of shrugs even though they’re laying down, side by side.

Fionn wishes they had something to smoke, but it would feel wrong. Chris would disapprove, probably. It’s good to stay on edge. He can’t even imagine Chris drunk.

“He’s always watching you. I get it,” Harry repeats, and turns to his side so they’re facing each other.

Fionn had thought maybe Harry would find it easier, what with all the Fame business, but he says this is different. There is some relief in being able to explain some of it and knowing he isn’t alone, even if it feels like a tangle of unnamed feelings in the pit of his stomach, mostly.

“We should go to bed,” Harry says, lazily, a little later, but makes no attempt to move.

Fionn wants to touch Harry, but he never makes first contact. The moment feels brittle, like it could just break if he so much as breathes too loud. He wants to suspend it, and also make it end, both yearning for and afraid of what happens after.

So he waits, on the threshold of sleep, in the moonlight, the sand of Dunkirk in his hair.

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote fanfic what has Harry Styles in it, whoops. /not in 1D fandom
> 
> Very little research went into this, but I just wanted to dump my Christopher Nolan feels somewhere and thought Fionn Whitehead is an absolute gem of an actor. He's probably happier than this.


End file.
